Apr 9, 2013

While Google uses their many services as data points to serve you ads, Facebook is taking the opposite approach. Facebook Home is going to be the one thing everyone has been waiting for Google to become, by injecting ads into every inch of your mobile experience.

Facebook’s presentation yesterday unveiled a visual, impressive approach to smartphone usage. If you’re a big Facebook user, Home looks like it has the potential to really enhance your smartphone experience. The large graphics and animated designs are a huge improvement over the stagnant, broken Android app the company currently has. By making Facebook the most important part of the phone, there’s a guarantee that any information you put there will be viewed, if not interacted with. With that in mind, Facebook Home is the perfect place to deliver the one thing no one actually wants on their phone — ads.

From day one, there have been detractors waiting for Google to bog their mobile operating system — not just sites or apps, bu the phone itself — down with ads. That day has yet to come, even if main content spaces remain ad-free, and Google remains resolute in their decision to keep the areas they design ad-free. When you allow another company to take over, they can do as they please. The open source nature of Android allows for Facebook Home to exist without needing to fundamentally alter Android. As part of the Facebook Home Program, advertisers will be granted access to tools that allow them to format their advertisements to suit the new visual platform.

Not at first, but eventually, Facebook intends to deliver ads to Home. In a way, this is similar to how Amazon released the most recent generation of Kindle hardware with ads (oh, sorry, “Special Offers”) integrated with the OS. Amazon allowed users to pay an opt-out fee to have the ads removed, and while it has never been made clear how many users chose to exercise the opt-out there was a sigh of relief when the option was presented. Facebook Home will offer no such choice, because Zuckerberg & co. believe that ads are just another form of content, and should be treated exactly the same as every other post in your Facebook feed.

Facebook Home

If ads are something that bother you, the only alternative here is to not use the service. Apps like TinFoil for Facebook have, in the past, protected some users from accidentally offering their information up to Facebook. Home will remove the protection offered there, as the service will have direct access to your location and obviously your Facebook information. Fortunately, if you’ve started using Facebook Home and you want to get rid of it, removing the app should be fairly painless. Even on the HTC First, AT&T’s soon to be released phone running Facebook Home by default, you should be able to easily remove the service and return to the default Android experience. As the First is based on Android 4.1.2, even if you are unable to remove the software by carrier lock it will be easy to disable.

By the time ads roll out to Facebook Home, most users will likely have either moved on or fallen in love with the service. There’s not going to be a ton of middle ground here. If Home is for you, ads are something you’re already dealing with on Facebook proper so it doesn’t really matter to you. The users that this will appeal to have already embraces ads in their feed, just as they embraced the ability to pay for promoted posts if they want all of their friends to see.